Here Are Just A Few Of Those...

There Really Is A Lot To Think About...
...When You Think About It! ..C.Dude

The Following Are Little-known facts:





• The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter in the alphabet. (Developed by Western Union to Test telex/twx communications)

• In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.

• Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.

• A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.

• In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile Services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.

• The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

• Hang On Sloopy is the official rock song of Ohio.

• Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?

• The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.

• The Bible has been translated into Klingon.

• The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie" (thus the name of the Don McLean song).

• When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.

• Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David;   Clubs - Alexander the Great; Hearts -Charlemagne; and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

• 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

• If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in     battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

• Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."

• Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.

• The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."

• Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

• The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

• An ostrich's eye is bigger that its brain.

• The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.

• The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

• The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.

• The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.

• Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.

• The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.

• Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

• If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

• No NFL team which plays its home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl.

• The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver."

• The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star Game.

• Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

• The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."

• In Cleveland, Ohio, it's illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.

• It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs.

• Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

• There are an average of 178 sesame seeds on a McDonald's Big Mac bun.

• The world's termites outweigh the world's humans 10 to 1.

• Pound for pound, hamburgers cost more than new cars.

• The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser in that order.

• When Heinz ketchup leaves the bottle, it travels at a rate of 25 miles per year.

• It's possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.

• Humans are the only primates that don't have pigment in the palms of their hands.

• Ten percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka.

• On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.

• In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons combined.

• Reno, Nevada is west of Los Angeles, California.

• Average age of top GM executives in 1994: 49.8 years. Average age of the Rolling Stones: 50.6.

• Elephants can't jump. Every other mammal can. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

• Five Jell-O flavors that flopped: celery, coffee, cola, apple, and chocolate.

• Kemo Sabe" means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.

• "Long in the tooth," meaning "old," was originally used to describe horses. As horses age, their gums recede, giving the impression that their teeth are growing. The longer the teeth look, the older the horse.

• "Ough" can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully.

• "Rhythms" is the longest English word without vowels.

• "Second string," meaning "replacement or backup," comes from the middle ages. An archer always carried a second string in case the one on his bow broke.

• A poem written to celebrate a wedding is called an epithalamium.

• Anagrams amused the ancient Greeks, Romans and Hebrews, and were popular during the Middle Ages.

• In 1945 a computer at Harvard malfunctioned and Grace Hopper, who was working on the computer, investigated, found a moth in one of the circuits and removed it. Ever since, when something goes wrong with a computer, it is said to have a bug in it.

• In the 19th century, craftsmen who made hats were known to be excitable and irrational, as well as to tremble with palsy and mix up their words. Such behavior gave rise to the familiar expression "mad as a hatter". The disorder, called hatter's shakes, was caused by chronic mercury poisoning from the solution used to treat the felt. Attacking the central nervous system, the toxin led to behavioral symptoms.

• No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.

• Poor whites in Florida and Georgia are called "crackers." They got the name from their principal staple food, cracked corn.

• The "O" when used as a prefix in Irish surnames means "descendant of."

• The "y" in signs reading "ye olde..." is properly pronounced with a "th" sound, not "y". The "th" sound does not exist in Latin, so ancient Roman occupied (present day) England used the rune "thorn" to represent "th sounds. With the advent of the printing press the character from the Roman alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case "y".

• The ancient Romans built such an excellent system of roads that the saying arose "all roads lead to Rome," that is, no matter which road one starts a journey on, he will finally reach Rome if he keeps on traveling. The popular saying came to mean that all ways or methods of doing something end in the same result, no method being better than another.

• The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you," is "And the rest of the day to yourself."

• The explative, "Holy Toledo," refers to Toledo, Spain, which became an outstanding Christian cultural center in 1085.

• The idiom "pillar of salt" means to have a stroke, or to become paralyzed and dead.

• The last thing to happen is the ultimate. The next-to-last is the penultimate, and the second-to-last is the antepenultimate.

• The phrase "raining cats and dogs" originated in 17th Century England. During heavy downpours of rain, many of these poor animals unfortunately drowned and their bodies would be seen floating in the rain torrents that raced through the streets. The situation gave the appearance that it had literally rained "cats and dogs" and led to the current expression.

• The phrase "sleep tight" originated when mattresses were set upon ropes woven through the bed frame. To remedy sagging ropes, one would use a bed key to tighten the rope.

• The right side of a boat was called the starboard side due to the fact that the astronavigators used to stand out on the plank (which was on the right side) to get an unobstructed view of the stars. The left side was called the port side because that was the side that you put in on at the port.

• The side of a hammer is a cheek.

• The term "devil's advocate" comes from the Roman Catholic Church. When deciding if someone should be sainted, a devil's advocate is always appointed to give an alternative view.

• The term "dog days" has nothing to do with dogs. It dates back to Roman times, when it was believed that Sirius, the Dog Star, added its heat to that of the sun from July3 to August 11, creating exceptionally high temperatures. The Romans called the period dies caniculares, or "days of the dog."

• The term "honeymoon" is derived from the Babylonians who declared mead, a honey-flavored wine, the official wedding drink, stipulating that the bride's parents be required to keep the groom supplied with the drink for the month following the wedding.

• The term "throw one's hat in the ring" comes from boxing, where throwing a hat into the ring once signified a challenge. Today it nearly always signifies political candidacy.

• "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified is to poke someone's eye out.

• The two lines that connect your top lip to the bottom of your nose are known as the philtrum.

• The white part of your fingernail is called the lunula.

• The word "assassination" was invented by Shakespeare.

• The word "coach" is derived from the village of Kocs, Hungary, where coaches were invented and first used.

• The word "karate" means "empty hand."

• The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."

• The word "set" has the highest number of separate definitions in the English Language (192 definitions according to the Oxford English Dictionary.)

• The word gargoyle comes down from the Old French: gargouille, meaning throat or gullet. This is also the origin of the word gargle. The word describes the sound produced as water passes the throat and mixes with air. In early architecture, gargoyles were decorative creatures on the drains of cathedrals.

• The word quisling comes from the name of Major Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian who collaborated with the Germans during their occupation of Norway. The word now means "traitor."

• The world's largest alphabet is Cambodian, with 74 letters.

• The world's most widely spoken language is the Mandarin dialect of Chinese, with 500 million speakers.

• The ZIP in Zip-code stands for "Zoning Improvement Plan."

• When ocean tides are at their highest, they are called "spring tides." When they are at their lowest, they are call "neap tides."

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